Photo Blog – Photography Blog for Niebrugge Images
A Greater Roadrunner, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California.
Beep Beep, these guys are cool! While we were in Anza-Borrego earlier this month I would spot this guy cruising through our campsite from time to time hunting for bugs – fun to watch.
Canon 5D Mark III, 70-200 f/2.8 lens with 1.4x converter at 300 mm, ISO 400, f/5.6 and 1/1600 of a second.
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Great Horned Owl nesting in a palm tree, Borrego Springs, California.
I was watching this nesting Great Horned Owl in 90 degree temperatures last week. As I sit here and watch a half of foot of fresh powder snow fall from the sky this morning at my home office in Alaska, I must admit that it seems more like 6 months ago then 6 days.
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My nephew Reilly Buck skiing in the Western Championships at Alyeska in Girdwood, Alaska.
As you can see we are back home. Few sights offer a more dramatic reminder as to just how beautiful Alaska is as the view from the airplane looking down onto Prince William Sound and the Chugach mountains on a sunny day! Wow just didn’t seem to do it justice.
We have had a busy few days. Towing back to Arizona, cleaning and putting our RV back in storage, meetings in Phoenix and a long flight home ate up all of three days.
But, fortunately we got home just in time to drive up to Girdwood to watch our nephew ski race yesterday (Wednesday). I can remember photographing Bodie Miller and Lindsey Vonn on this same course at the U.S. National Championships many years ago. It was really fun to return to watch and photograph Reilly! Now I’m not trying to say my nephew is in the same category as Bodie and Lindsey – well, except in his Uncle’s eyes!
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Sunrise this morning just a short time ago. Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California.
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As a kid we called these guys “horny toads”. They look like something that should be roaming with the Dinosaurs! This Flat-tail Horned Lizard was in Coyote Canyon in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California.
This was captured with a Canon 5D III, 70-200 f/2.8 lens with a 2x converter at ISO 200, f/5.6 and 2,000 of a second shutter speed.
I spotted him on my way to a mountain bike ride. Fortunately it rain across the trail or I don’t think I would have ever spotted it. Look at how well it blends into the desert.
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A blooming Fishhook Cactus, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California.
Another storm pasted through this area late last week, but didn’t bring too much in the way of precipitation. Temperatures forecasted to reach into the 90′s this week won’t do the limited and late wildflower bloom any favors.
The best area in the Park that I have seen has been along the Elephant Tree Trail. Here you can find some nice cactus blooms especially Beaver-tail and Barrel. There are a wide variety of other wildflowers – not the thick fields that get photographers excited, but a nice variety that should interest the flower peepers including poppies, phacelia, lavender and Desert Chicory to name just a few. There are many small blooms that I didn’t take the time to identify.
In Borrego Palm Canyon you can find more lavender, lots of Chuparosa and a little Brittlebush along with other wildflowers.
Yesterday in Coyote Canyon I spotted small patches of Sand Verbena, but it is very limited. The famous fields along Henderson Canyon Road are empty.
On a positive note, I’m seeing lots of cactus with buds – I think there will be widespread cactus blooming later this month.
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A mountain biker crossing the Goat Canyon Trestle in the Carrizo Gorge. At 200 feet tall and 750 feet long, this beautiful trestle it the longest, tallest curved wooden trestle ever built in the United States.
I have been wanting to visit this amazing structure located in a remote portion of Anza-Borrego for some time. A year ago, fellow photographer and writer Bert Gildart hatched a plan to mountain bike old railroad to this trestle. We were able to complete our plan this past week and it was a blast!
I’m getting ready for another workshop this weekend, but will provide more details and images of this trip next week.
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A stormy recent morning at our campground in Borrego Springs. We have had a nice variety of weather this year – from cold, stormy weather like you see here that brought fresh snow down the mountains, to temps approaching 90!
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Laughlin, Nevada at sunset.
Since it has almost been almost a week since I have posted, I though I needed to do an update as to what we have been up to over a busy week.
Recently we have lost out on some photo sales for laughlin photos because my coverage was not current enough – evidently some of the hotel names have changed. So we ended up doing a quick three day trip over to Southern Nevada.
We then returned to Anza-Borrego for my Anza-Borrego photo workshop along with a private tour – I had a lot of fun, wonderful people and great photo opportunities! The highlights for me included the amazing sunrise on Sunday morning and watching a young Desert Bighorn nurse just a short distance away from us on Friday morning. I won’t be sharing photos from those days since I don’t photograph during my workshops, but it sure appeared everyone else got some pretty cool stuff and for me that is very satisfying.
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I have spared you from my shameless self promotion posts over the last few months, but this magazine it too cool not to share. It showed up just before we left on this current trip and I grabbed a photo of the magazine cover just as I was walking out the door. The cover photo is of beautiful downtown Spokane, Washington.
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The fact that I was out last night photographing this cool statue, one of many in and around Borrego Springs, probably speaks volumes about the current wildflower conditions – there aren’t too many right now.
Anza-Borrego is well know for its desert wildflower bloom, and because of this, a lot of people like to read about the predictions for the current season – myself included. Some years there just aren’t any wildflowers, but a good bloom has a big economic impact on this community, so it makes sense that wildflowers are the source of a lot of speculations. And us nature photographers love a good bloom. So, here is a bit of a summary from what I have read, heard and seen over the past week. In short, there is good news and bad news, let me start with the bad news.
There are many factors that lead to a good bloom and the relationship between most of them are really not all that well understood. But, there is no question that lots of rain is a good thing. The rainfall totals are based upon a June 1 water year, so year to date figures begin in June. Two years ago was a good but not great wildflower year, and the visitor center had already received 7.43 inches of rain by this date. Last year was a poor year and the visitor center had received 3.60 inches of rain by this date. By comparison, this year to date, the visitor center has only received 2.93 inches of rain, well less then half of two years ago.
So what is the good news? Well these figures were as of yesterday, February 19th. Last night it rained pretty steady all night long. I haven’t seen the latest figures, and I know rain on a RV can sound like more then it really is, but judging from all the standing water this morning, it was significant.
In addition, It is helpful to have some rain in the Fall, but most beneficial to have the majority of the rain during the winter months. If most of the rain came in September, most of it would be wasted. Even though this years totals are very low, much of it came during the winter. This area received over an inch of rain at the end of January, and more rain last night could be perfect timing.
We have only been in the area for about a week, and already I have seen some big changes in the desert – lots of areas are turning green. Now granted, a lot of the green could be weeds, but it looks like some of it is wildflowers beginning to sprout, at least in certain areas.
So I agree with what most of the experts are saying and there will be a wildflower bloom this year. That is good, I have been here on years where there isn’t a bloom, and it is a bummer. Now the question is – how good will it be? Stay tuned for updates.
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Our icebreaker Ortelius at Brown Bluff, Antarctica.
I have missed a few days on the blog as we traveled, got setup and enjoyed some warm weather in Anza-Borrego, but all is well. A storm is passing through the next few days that could bring rain to the desert – could make for some interesting photo opps!
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Our icebreaker the Ortelius as we approached the Antarctic Circle.
Speaking of breaking ice – we are heading out the door – my next post will be from Anza-Borrego Desert State Park!
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Crabeater Seals. I think Crabeater Seal is a funny name for a seal that doesn’t eat crabs. They eat krill and other crustaceans.
I found it difficult to capture interesting images of seal in Antarctica because they pretty much just laid there. I thought this was one of my more interesting seal images thanks to that wonderful background!
Canon 5D Mark III, Canon 70-200 f/2.8 lens at 180, ISO 320, f/8 and 1/2000 of a second.
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This was at 2:29 in the morning as we neared the Antarctic Circle.
Our icebreaker cruised through ice flows like this as if they were nothing. But, the large ice ridges off in the distance were a different story. The captain studied them closely before picking his route so that he could push through a weak spot. We were allowed in the bridge and it was interesting listening to our captain shout out orders. Things like “Go right there and ram it!” Even though he was Russian, he was giving orders in broken English I think in part for our entertainment. I got the feeling that icebreaker Captains live for this – at least it appeared that our Captain was having a good time.
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As we were photographing this sleeping Leopard Seal we were very surprised to see this Gentoo Penguin blast out of the water and land very near one of its feared predators! Before the Leopard Seal could wake up, the Gentoo Penguin quietly walked to the edge of the iceberg and jumped back into the ocean undetected.
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A group of Gentoo Penguin. I’m guessing this one may not resonate with a lot of people, but I liked the graphic nature of this image.
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This is the moon over the Antarctic Peninsula near the Antarctic Circle.
So many things were backwards down there. For starters, it was summer in January. It seemed weird to head South during the summer for longer days and North meant shorter days.
The one thing I hadn’t thought about was that the moon would be backwards. It appears backward because we are basically looking at it from upside down when you are at the bottom of the earth, kinda like standing on your head.
So in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun light moves across the moon from the left to the right creating the familiar DOC shapes as it moves towards full and then away, it does just the opposite down South. In the Southern Hemisphere, that same memory tool becomes COD. In other words, the D shape you see in this photo we associate with moving towards the full moon actually means we are moving away from it when seen in the Southern Hemisphere.
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These are three Adelie Penguin – definitely cute and curious little guys. Penguins have so much personality and can be so expressive – they are really fun to watch!
Here they are on an iceberg. I often preferred finding them on icebergs because it usually meant nice, clean bright snow. Since it doesn’t snow much in Antarctica, the snow in and around the colonies was often very dingy looking. I also liked the graphical simplicity of this setting with a diagonal of snow splitting the blue sky.
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Sunset was around 11:30 at night this close to the Antarctic Circle. This was from Booth Island.
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